Class Notes April 2002

The mortality rate in our class remains low. Even one death is too many, I know, but we have had, at this writing, just two losses in the last year, those of WOODY FISHER and DR. BILL MATTSON.

Medical treatments have grown, in many cases, so sophisticated as to afford hope even to the very seriously ill, as recent examples in the class show. Their rays of optimism should brighten us all.

DICK DAVIDSON, battling a recurrence of cancer, his wife of 42 years, Arlene, tells us, completed in mid-April two and a half weeks of intensive radiation following lymph node surgery and "was pronounced sufficiently healed to begin his year long course of Alpha Interferon. He has now had three treatments with extremely mild side effects."

Dick himself, in a speech at his Temple marking the 50th anniversary of his Bar Mitzvah, observed, "I have been exposed to enough rads to power a nuclear submarine half way around the world. I glow in the dark, like a permanent night-light...While I may not be the ideal prospect for a life insurance policy, I am not afraid to buy green bananas. I beat it before, and I'll beat it again."

DICK CHASE, meanwhile, is upbeat despite having to give up piloting his own plane because of heart problems that have brought him worsening atrial fibrillation over the last decade and then arterial blockages that were discovered a year and a half ago and led to two angioplasties and the implantation of stents. A branch artery remains blocked and he says he can feel the pressure "upon exertion."

"Basically, I can do 90 or 95% what I could do before," he told me. "It's something I am viewing I can live with very well...I work out in a gym three times a week. I have a weight program and do aerobic exercises. Certainly, I can increase the speed. They want me to exercise and stay active."

CHUCK KAUFMAN was one of the outstanding athletes in our class, and he remarks that his heart attack in 2000 took a toll, both physically and emotionally, despite the fact that his father had died comparatively young when Chuck was only a sophomore in Hanover. Chuck underwent a single bypass, and his doctor came out and talked to his three childfren about third generation risk factores they should be aware of for themselves.

"The thing that stunned me was the emotions of this," Chuck says. "I had read it and heard it and the doctor had warned me, but still, I'd be watching a golf tournament and all of a sudden tears would be coming. As good as I was, I wasn't prepared...But now, I'm feeling pretty good. It took five or six months, but I'm back working out three times a week."

There are, sadly, few rays of optimism with DON WEITZMAN. But his wife of 40 years, Harriet says, "Every once in a while you still see the little spark" of the brilliant trial attorney he used to be, before he was struck several years ago at age 58, with the little known Lewy body dementia, a variation of Alzheimers and Parkinson's diseases that may hit even younger than anyone expects.

Harriet is particulafrly grateful to ALAN FRIEDMAN for his visits and understandingj. Today, she says of Don, "he kind of talks in numbers. That's most of his vocabulary...We're forever playing around with his medications. He sleeps a lot. He either runs out of steam, or in my opinion, he kind of shuts down. He doesn't focus." There are still other moments, she says, and she wants visitors to "know the real person they're dealing with, not the person they see today...But the last year has been really hard."

--KEN REICH, 5522 Nagle Ave., Van Nuys, CA 91401, (818) 994-9231 (h), (213) 237-4712 (fax); e-mail: ken.reich@latimes.com